To address the tasks of the primer project, I had to select an artefact or assemblage which holds personal meaning to myself to conduct a disassemble report of as well as write three statements of the item. Upon deciding on an assemblage, I considered items of analogue nature due to me finding them of more personal interest than digital products. Due to the age of analogue products, I often find them more sentimental and of a higher historical value.
Background
This was especially true for the artefact I settled upon. The Coomber 393 Cassette Recorder is a relic of the analogue era as well as a socially prevalent product due to its frequent use in classrooms, language labs etc for 'group listening' due to its 5 output headphone ports. Despite never being seen as a feat of design or beauty - 'it’s not a pretty sight and here are no frills to speak of' (Dusty Data, 2018) - its design was in better suited to its purpose of being simple to use and withstand rough treatment and continual use. As well as this, the fact that 'it’s a bit of a lump and won’t win any audio performance awards also means it’s not that attractive to thieves, which continues to be a concern for educational organisations' (Dusty Data, 2018).
Value
Financially, a Coomber 393 Recorder would have, in its hay day, set you back around £100 but now would cost around £20 to purchase today. The exchange value of the unit has dropped quite significantly since the launch of the product in 1997 however it has since been completely overtaken by not only digital music but the compact disk which was first produced in 1982 but had reached much more commercial capability in the 1990s when it was rolled out on a much larger scale. Despite this, the Coomber 393 has had over 3 longterm users in its lifetime - first purchased by a school in the 1990s, being taken to a repair service and resold for reuse after significant use at the school, before before being purchased by myself for £20 towards the mid 2010s.
In terms of personal value, the recorder was used quite significantly by myself during 2018 when I quite recorded several cassettes to document my interests in music etc at the time alongside some original demos of guitar and bass tracking. Despite being quite dysfunctional in terms of sharing this music, I enjoyed its portability and privacy for creating music which feels more permanent due to it being an analogue piece of technology which you can physically hold. These are just opening thoughts of the artefact which will develop during its disassembly.
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